WEYLAND-YUTANI ORBITAL RESEARCH FACILITY STATION
LV-203
SECURITY BLOCK 6
My warped reflection in the aluminum table stared back at me. The grime from the broken machines and the volcanic soil of Tenebris was still on my face and the smell of dirt, grease, and sweat permeated my overalls. I could see blood on my collar. It wasn’t mine.
The company had questions and then more questions. Different people were brought into this room and I had to repeat the same story over and over. I knew it was pointless to say nothing. I’d heard about how company psychologists could get you to talk no matter what. So I told them. Again and again. I told them everything. Well, almost everything.
My only chance of getting out of here and seeing my parents and my dumbass brother back on the ranch in Guadalajara was to tell them what I knew and make them confident I’d never tell a living soul about what I’d seen on Tenebris. Even if that meant burying deep what happened to my friends and the horrors I saw.
I glanced at the coffee cup with the “Building Better Worlds” logo and contemplated drinking the dark fluid, but declined. The pseudo-coffee was just one more head trip they played on you in here. A reminder that if you don’t cooperate, you’ll never smell the real thing again.
Finally, the door slid open and the two men returned. One of them looked like he was in his mid-thirties. The other man seemed older, in his late forties. They mumbled their names the first time around but they seemed interchangeable and fake, so I didn’t bother to remember them.
“How are we doing, Miss Philip?” asked the older man.
“When can I go home?” I replied.
“We need you to tell us what happened at the Tenebris mining colony,” said the newbie.
“I already did. Why am I still here?”
“You went to a quarantine planet that was off-limits. We need to know everything you saw there, Jess,” he said with a smile, attempting to show comfort.
“And then? Can I go home?” I asked, leaning forward.
“In due time,” he replied.
I looked down at my ragged nails, holding back tears. What had I gotten myself into? I wondered what Dad was thinking about me.
“Tell us again about your friends,” said the older man.
* * *
Two days ago we were in a small cruiser on our way to Tenebris to film a documentary for Lara Collins. There were five of us: Connor Matthews, who acted as producer and handled logistics; Kevin Ramirez was the holo operator; and Brendan Watson was in charge of acoustics. I was Kevin’s recommendation as assistant holo tech—the only outsider since they all knew each other from film school back in Brazil.
There had been a mining disaster on Tenebris and the whole colony shut off from communications. The official explanation was that they hit an unexpected gas pocket. Lara was trying to make a name for herself in doing eco docs and had gotten wind that the company’s official incident report and what actually happened were very different.
Lara gathered us in the cargo bay and went over the plan again. She was tall and could command attention when she wanted. Her mother had been a journalist back in Haiti and her father, a Brazilian himself, served in the Colonial Marines. Although he didn’t have to because the whole family had been wealthier than hell. Lara struck me as a rich girl trying to prove herself. She probably got that from her dad.
“We’ll spend twelve hours on Tenebris,” she explained. “The goal is to get as much data as possible. Record everything you can, but stay safe. The planet is highly volcanic, so stay sharp. In case we lose each other, we’ll be picked up at the Colony Landing Field. Don’t forget. The Colony Landing Field. Any questions?”
“Yeah,” said Connor, glancing up from a tablet. “If we lose each other, where will we be picked up?”
Lara smiled, but something about it felt forced. I didn’t know her well enough to read her. If I had, I never would have stepped off the ship.
We spent the next few hours before landing prepping and geeking out about movies, holos and synths, doing what films nerds like us do. It was a good crew and I could see what Lara liked about working with them. Connor was the smartass. Brendan was a bit spacey but knew his gear like nobody I’d ever known. Kevin was happy to field strip his holo-cam or joke around with us. I’d worked with him a couple times but didn’t really know him except for the fact he took his camera work very seriously.
When we got into orbit our pilot, Heitor, announced from the cockpit above, “Buckle up kiddos, we’re almost there. Gonna be a little bumpy here on out.”
We stashed our gear and strapped in.
Tenebris appeared on a monitor as a globe of whirling dark purple clouds streaked with lightning flares on the night side.
“What do you know about Tenebris?” Lara asked Heitor. “I ran cargo there when the mine was operational,” he replied. “Pretty much everything you’ve heard is true. Hot, air smells like ass, and those damn vines everywhere. There was a colony before this one. That one had a mining disaster, too. Or at least that’s what they called it.”
“What do you call it?” I asked.
“Bad luck. This place is all bad luck.”
The ship plunged through the cloud layer and the massive mining facility became visible below. Even though the sun had set, the metal machines and structures gleamed in the glow of the clouds and lightning flashes. It was a vast complex that would take days to explore. Canopies of tall trees typical to a tropical climate were scattered intermittently. I didn’t want to overreact, but a part of me wanted to turn back because this planet appeared far from welcoming. My first impression was a junkyard. My second was of a graveyard. But that would be a mistake. Graveyards are safe and only dead things live there.
As the ship hovered over the Colony Landing Field, we all had our eyes glued to the viewscreen.
“Who needs nightmares when you have this?” said Kevin.
I agreed.
Heitor responded to our unease. “You gotta stay alert in places like these. And don’t eat insects or plants or anything you think is edible. They’re all poisonous. It’ll take seconds for these buggers to rip apart your DNA.”
“Got it,” said Connor. “Don’t eat the bugs.”
“And don’t let them eat you,” replied Kevin.
Lara noticed our despondent looks. When the ship landed with a final thump, she quickly unbuckled and grabbed her stuff. “Alright, who’s ready to rock ’n’ roll?” she asked, faking enthusiasm, and headed for the door.
* * *
Brendan lit a joint as he looked at the retracting ramp. Lara studied the scene before her. The air wasn’t great but wasn’t all that bad. It smelled like sulfur and machine oil. That was still breathable. I’d breathed worse.
“What’s the plan?” Kevin asked.
“We quickly scan parts of the main complex, find a place to set up, then head out,” said Lara. “And shoot anything that looks weird.”
“Define ‘weird’?” asked Kevin.
“You know… weird,” she replied. We began walking toward the main facility using our flashlights to probe the machinery and overgrowth. There was a steady breeze and the sound of metal doors banging in the wind, but nothing else. Tenebris was quiet. Its only inhabitants seemed to be eerie shadows and rusting machinery covered in black vines.
Kevin and I had our 3D holo-cameras turned on from the moment we landed. While we were recording, Brendan set up his high frequency audio modules at different points that worked as an omnidirectional tracker. They’d also pick up on us when we moved around, serving as safety for Brendan while he worked with a separate base module. Connor used a spectral detector to pick up on radioactive fragments that could lead us to the main site of the mining accident.
When we entered the main complex, there was one building towering over the other colony buildings. This one looked modern and complete, while most of them were little more than metal sheds and prefab structures.
The others followed Connor into one of the buildings, while I took position on top of a metal staircase and shot a wide holo of the colony. I searched the shadows, looking for anything unusual, but all I could see was an abandoned world.
I entered and found Kevin, Brendan, and Lara standing over a depression in the floor. Connor was down inside, scanning it, searching for radioactive fragments with his gear. The ceiling was missing.
“What’s going on?” I asked. Lara didn’t hear me. She’d been nibbling at her nails.
Brendan shrugged as Connor climbed out of the pit with the spectral detector and a confused look on his face.
“Um…” he said, like he was still trying to put his thoughts into words.
“What’s wrong?” Lara asked, impatient.
“Nothing. That’s the problem.” Connor shook his head skeptically. “I can’t pick up any barium signatures. No evidence whatsoever to indicate a mining disaster. There was an explosion here, but that could have been a small gas leak. Nothing to take out a colony.”
“Are you sure? I mean, the place is huge,” I asked.
“It should be everywhere,” Connor said.
“If there was no big radiation exposure, where are the colonists?” Kevin asked.
Lara spoke up. “That’s why we’re here. We’ll settle for thirty then start filming, and look around the complex after.”
* * *
While the others set up inside the admin facility, I found a loading dock that overlooked part of the colony and grabbed some more shots. The night wind was picking up, but I wore an excursion jacket that kept me warm. The wind wasn’t as harsh, but the mistiness lingered. As I traced my flashlight through the junk and debris, a wrecked tractor caught my eye. The lone vehicle’s windows were tinted but the deep crack on it was unmissable. I considered checking it out when suddenly I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise.
I leaned over the railing and something… or someone… appeared to shimmer past the corner of my eye on the building directly below.
I gasped and jumped back. I was pretty sure it had come from the direction of the trees. The spindly branches were still swaying. I pointed my light at the foliage, but there was nothing there. On the surface, everything seemed “normal.” So, what did I see? It looked like some kind of steam or vapor. Maybe there was a vent that didn’t show up on thermal?
“Hey,” a voice behind me called out. I jumped. It was Brendan, lighting up a smoke.
“Yeah… the wind. It’s picking up.” I was already rationalizing away what I’d not quite seen.
“This place reminds me of when we shot a show about haunted spaceships. Of course, most of that was bullshit. I’d be in one compartment and Connor would knock on the walls of another so we could pretend it was some dead space trucker.”
“What if he did that now?” I joked.
“I’d beat the living daylights out of him. This place doesn’t need to be amped up any more than it is.”
“Yeah. But hey, ten more hours and we’re out of here,” I said, trying to sound encouraging.
Brendan took another drag and looked into the sky. The violet-streaked clouds were almost luminous.
“Something else got you worried?” I asked.
“If the explosion did happen, you think there may be survivors? Bodies at least. There was no rescue.” Brendan said. “We haven’t seen any bodies. That’s what’s really tripping me. Maybe they’re all in a bunker or something?”
“I don’t know.”
He shrugged, but I was certain he didn’t stop thinking about it. Neither did I.
Then I asked, “What’s it like working with Lara?”
Brendan thought for a moment and then said, “Let’s just say, she knows what she wants, and she’ll get it one way or another.”
* * *
We regrouped with the rest of the team and made our way toward the primary excavation site to look for more evidence of what happened. As we passed another hauler, Connor stopped at a tractor.
I looked for the shimmer, but he was staring at something else. He pointed his flashlight at the side of the metal treads. It had been melted.
“So, there was an explosion,” said Lara.
“No. Not an explosion,” Connor replied. “Do you know how hot it has to be to melt that?”
“It could be a mining laser,” said Kevin.
“That would leave char marks.”
“Interesting,” Lara said softly. Her fascinated look wasn’t lost on us. As she moved her hand closer to it, Connor pushed it away.
“Back up. It’s fresh,” Connor said. He smelled it, then pulled himself up. “It’s acid. Must’ve happened a couple of days ago.”
“Okay. But still no barium signature. Somebody doesn’t have their story straight about what happened,” replied Kevin, looking at Lara.
“That’s why we’re here,” she answered.
“Is it?” he asked and shot her a questioning look.
She just kept walking and spoke over her shoulder. “You’re free to wait it out in the admin building.”
Connor gave Kevin a shrug. “Come on, man.”
“Whatever,” he answered back and continued on with us.
* * *
We reached the south gate of the complex and passed a threshold that led to where volcanic-gravel-covered roads carved paths through the jungle to distant mines. Lara took the lead as she climbed up a small ridge. It was hard to see the ground, but we were able to help each other up. For some reason, the deeper we went into the jungle, the hotter it got. The fog also thickened, making it difficult to see where we were going. We trudged past tall trees that were wrapped in black vines snaking around their trunks.
Even though we couldn’t see farther than a few feet into the fog, our holo-cams were able to capture details that were farther out.
After climbing for a few minutes, Lara stopped in her tracks. She was looking at something ahead of her on the ground. She pulled out a laser pen from her back pocket, kneeled down, and picked it up, dangling the thing in front of us. Semi-translucent, it looked almost like an old-fashioned silk stocking at first.
“What the hell is that?” asked Connor.
Kevin moved forward to get a good look at it.
“Looks like dead skin,” Brendan said softly.
I looked closer and speculated, “It’s like a thin shell.”
Then, Connor said under his breath, “Guys.”
He was staring at something behind Lara, and his face started turning pale. With a shaking finger, he pointed past us. We turned and moved closer toward a stomach-wrenching sight.
Lying on the dense undergrowth was a severed human arm with a wedding band still around a finger. It was our first sign of the miners that had lived here.
“Oh my god,” Kevin muttered. He didn’t stop recording but looked away, repulsed.
“What the—Where the…?” Connor tried to find words. He paced back and forth.
The severed arm was fresh: you could tell from the blood that hadn’t dried. I realized that we were in a dangerous territory and hushed everyone. Lara stared at the arm, then the area around her, like she was searching for something.
“I think we’re close,” Lara said. Then she looked at us with almost a glee to her expression.
“Close to what?” I asked.
She didn’t respond.
Disgusted, I turned to everyone else and said, “Let’s get out of here.”
Lara tried to stop us but we were way past that. We hurried past her quickly, eager to return to the safety of the mining camp.
Lara eventually shut up and followed us back to the admin building. Once we were inside, she started pleading with us again.
“We need to go back out there and find out what happened. It’s important to the families of the people that died here,” she said.
Behind her, Brendan started rummaging through her gear bag looking for a storage card.
“I just want answers,” she pleaded.
Part of me wanted to believe her, but I didn’t trust her.
“What the fuck?” said Brendan as he looked up from a viewer where he’d plugged in a holo-card he’d found in her bag.
“Shit,” Lara groaned.
On screen a man in dirty overalls begged to the camera, “This is Tenebris 88 requesting assistance again! We’ve lost half our personnel and we can’t make it much longer before they—” Suddenly several colonists shrieked and scurried past him. The man recoiled in horror at a sight off camera. A mix of deadly, ominous sounds was let out, as if they were running from more than just one threat. “Go go go!!!” the man yelled and ran for his life. Before the person behind the screen could make a run, the camera was knocked down hard and the video was cut off by static.
The room went dead silent. Brendan pulled out the card, turned to Lara and said, “Wrong cartridge.”
We were equally stunned, staring transfixed at the blank screen of the viewer.
“What are the ‘They’ he was talking about?” asked Brendan. He pulled a laser pistol from her bag. “And why do you have this?”
“Lara, you’ve pulled some crazy shit before, but this is next-level,” said Connor.
She glanced around at the faces of her friends and realized she couldn’t keep silent. “Someone intercepted this transmission after the planet was quarantined,” she said. “After. As in, the company had already said everyone was dead. This was the only message that got out. You know how much I care—how much we all care—about preventing these assholes from raping other planets. I don’t know what happened. We’re here to expose their lies.”
I scoffed. I still didn’t believe her.
She looked at me and said, “We care about the same things. People were hurt. And companies like Weyland-Yutani are responsible for creating these mining colonies. And they will do it again. It’s up to us if we want to expose these fuckers.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.” I replied, still not trusting her.
“Damn it. There could be survivors,” said Kevin.
Lara nodded. “Exactly. We have six hours left. I say after we catch our breath, we go record whatever we can, from safety, and then that’s it. We’ll be out of here. Either way, we have to wait for the ship.”
“Seriously, Lara?” Connor was still pissed.
“You would have come either way, right?” she replied, looking around the group. “The same for all of you? We’ve done wildlife docs before. We did the holo on the LG-805 pteraglyders. We watched our backs and stayed safe. The colony riots, the same thing. These people were miners. They didn’t have our experience in keeping at a safe distance and observing.”
She was manipulating us, and it was working on some of them.
“Fuck. Let’s do it,” Connor said.
The others nodded in agreement. The reality wasn’t that Lara gave us a good reason to go out there. It was the fact that we were all too damn curious.
* * *
As we were getting ready to leave, Kevin came bursting into the gear room. “I just saw something move on the holo-camera!”
“What?” asked Lara.
“Past the scrapyard!”
We raced out of the admin building.
We took another route, and it got colder. I gestured for the crew to follow me down a side path. I kept checking my screen and looking at the 3D map of the terrain. While it couldn’t see through the rocks and scrap metal, it made it easier to find a passage through the foliage.
We reached a clearing near a tall metal building with no walls. Underneath were rows of cabinets and tractor parts. But it wasn’t the man-made objects that caught our attention.
I saw a glistening pool of liquid show up on the holo-cam. Leathery egg shapes scattered all around. It was difficult to describe from a distance, but they looked soft, slimy, and essentially rotting. The tops were wide open and resembled flower petals.
I gasped when I saw what lay just beyond them. Bodies. Human bodies. At least half a dozen people were stuck to the cabinets and treads, trapped by some kind of hard, glassy webbing. There was no question that they were dead. Besides, their faces were frozen in agony and in the center of their chests were massive fist-sized holes.
These people didn’t just die, they died painfully.
Lara was on a monitor that displayed both holo-cam outputs. She stared at the scene with a strange admiration I couldn’t begin to describe.
“Brendan, are you picking up any movement on acoustics?” Lara asked.
“Nothing. Just us,” he said.
“Kevin, what was it that moved on your radar then?” she asked.
“I don’t know. It looked like a figure that just—”
“Shimmered and disappeared?” I spoke.
“How did you know?” he asked.
Lara announced, “Okay then. We could go into two teams and see what we can find? We can keep contact through our radios.”
“Are you serious?” I asked incredulously. “We need to get the hell out of here.”
“To where?” she replied. “The ship doesn’t come back for hours.”
“Then we hole up in the admin building.”
“No go,” said Brendan. “I’m getting sounds from there.”
We turned to him, white-knuckled.
“Sounds? What kind?” I asked.
“Movement. Desks and objects being thrown around. Multiple… things.”
“Survivors!” exclaimed Kevin.
Brendan shook his head. “Not people. It sounds like they’re searching.”
“They? Who is they?!” Connor asked with fear in his voice.
Through the thick fog, I pointed to the ground, aiming my flashlight toward one of the large impressions left behind. It was a print of a foot longer than a human’s with clawed toes.
“Whatever did this,” I said.
“Oh god,” Kevin said.
Connor asked, “Well, what are they searching for?”
“Us. They’re searching for us,” I replied.
“How is this possible? Tenebris doesn’t have any animals bigger than a cat. The asteroids and volcanoes,” he insisted.
“Tell it to them,” I replied, indicating to the bodies with the ripped-out chests.
“Alright, we need to keep moving,” said Lara. “Brendan can let us know if anything is coming. I’m not sure where we’re safe,” she said. “We should move in two groups, so we can keep an eye out for each other. One low, one high. Just like the pteragliders.”
“I wasn’t with you on that,” I replied.
“Flying sharks with teeth. If they get close, hit them with your camera,” said Kevin. “Most people freeze and that’s the problem. Don’t freeze.” He pointed to the dead bodies. “They probably froze.”
I sighed. “Fine. Alright.”
“We’ll stay smart. Jess, Brendan, Connor: Crew A. Kevin, you’re with me,” said Lara.
Before we went our ways, Brendan yelled.
“Holy crap!”
He took his headphones off and looked up to the sky.
He continued, “Wow, shit! You don’t hear that?”
“What is it?” Lara asked, stirring.
He pointed to a glow in the cloud cover. Suddenly, we heard a deafening hum. We looked up at the black sky and saw something whizz in the direction of the jungle. I directed my holo-cam toward it.
It was a spaceship.
“What kind of ship is that?” I asked. I’d never seen anything like it.
“We should check it out,” said Lara.
“It could be the Company,” said Connor.
“I’d rather be closer to them than to whatever did that,” replied Brendan, shrinking away from the carnage.
“We’ll keep a safe distance,” said Lara, motioning to Kevin and heading toward the adjacent ridge, nearer to the ship.
Kevin shook his head then followed her with his gear. “I don’t even think you know what that means.”
We went separate ways.
* * *
Brendan began climbing a rocky cliff up ahead for a better vantage point.
I couldn’t keep up. Something in me wanted to just… just stay back and wait it out—like an inner voice telling me something bad was about to happen.
“Hold up,” I said and looked up at Brendan and Connor. “I don’t know about this.”
Connor clasped my shoulders and said, “Jess, you got this. As long as we’re doing it the right way, we’ll be fine. I promise.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t just scared for myself. I don’t think the others had any idea what they were in for despite their talk of shooting extraterrestrial species.
I set the holo-cam on a rock and looked around. On the monitor, I could see Kevin and Lara crouched on the adjacent ridge. As the fog drifted away and the glow of the engines faded, we could see a large spaceship sitting in the middle of the flat plain. The shape was fluid, almost organic. It looked like something that was grown and not the boxy machines you see bolted together in shipyards.
On my monitor I could see scorch marks and dents that showed the ship had been through a lot. Was it some kind of battle craft?
The opening to a major mining cavern lay three hundred meters beyond the ship. The sharp rocks that lined it resembled an angry mouth screaming at the world. I don’t think the vessel landed there by accident.
I zoomed in further. Steam vented from ports as the ship came to the rest. There was a hissing sound, then a ramp lowered. Something stepped out of the ship. It was just one at first… but then came another. A third one stepped out of the bushes and approached them. He had been around the whole time. The mysterious shimmering started to make sense. They chittered in low trills. Tall. That was the first word that came to mind. Bipedal, like a human, but not human. They were covered in some kind of armor and their heads were almost arrow-shaped. Cables of some kind were draped along the back of their helmets like dreadlocks. From head to toe, they were covered in armor and some kind of netting holding it all together.
“Those aren’t people,” mumbled Brendan.
“No shit,” whispered Connor.
I whispered over my radio, “Kevin, do you see that?”
“Unfortunately,” he replied.
“Are they androids?” I asked Lara over the radio.
“I have no idea.”
I studied their feet. They were ugly, but not the same ones as the print we saw before.
One of the creatures scanned the surrounding ridge, then felt the rocks beneath him. He was a half a head shorter than the tallest one, as was the other. The big one had to be at least eight foot tall. His armor was old and battered. It seemed like he wanted to make use of it until it ripped apart.
There was nothing human about the way they spoke.
I angled the holo-cam, pushing it slightly forward. The tall creatures were focused on the mouth of the cave, not us. Through my monitor, I saw them assembling something. It was a long tube on a tripod. They aimed it at the mouth of the cavern.
Lara whispered, “What are they doing?”
Connor replied, “I don’t know… it looks like a rocket launcher.”
BOOM! The launcher sent out a shuddering wave, throwing us back. Something shot into the cavern. There was a silence followed by a cloud of yellow smoke pouring from the opening.
It slowly drifted away and the tall creatures took up a position in front of it. They formed a small line and held onto bladed weapons including spears and oddly shaped swords.
“What the hell?” asked Kevin.
“I’m getting a weird reading on that smoke cloud,” said Connor. “The chemical has some kind of strange enzyme compound.”
“To do what?” asked Kevin.
And then we heard it. Clicking sounds, like fingernails tapping on ceramic, began emanating from the cavern. A few at first, then more and more until it sounded like a crashing wave.
“It sounds like giant bugs,” I said aloud.
“Then that was a bug bomb,” Brendan whispered into the comm.
The mouth of the cavern somehow grew blacker, and then a swarm of insect-like creatures lunged out of the cave at the hunters. I panned my holo-cam toward it and zoomed in. It was a horrid sight. Hundreds of agile shapes with no facial appearance except devilish metallic teeth crawled and ran toward the creatures with the bladed weapons.
Their heads were opaque shells. Their skeletal structure appeared to be on the outside, with pointy ridges and a long sharp tail then ended in a spear point. What god would create something like this?
As the huge insects emerged, the hunters picked away at them with shoulder-mounted lasers, blasting holes in their oblong skulls which erupted with yellowish liquid that made the ground smoke.
The battle-scarred hunter stood at the forefront using a large metal blade to slit limbs and heads from the bugs, acrobatically moving out of the way after each kill to avoid the spray of blood. The less-experienced hunters focused on using their shoulder cannons to pick off the bugs before they got close.
Some of the bugs seemed disoriented as they came out of the cavern. I wondered if the missile they launched had done something besides just piss them off. It reminded me of how security forces used stun grenades and vomit gas to break up rioters.
Wave after wave of bugs kept coming out of the cavern. The hunters held their ground, hacking and slashing until the bodies were piled so high they had to move to higher ground to avoid leaping attacks from the bugs.
When the old hunter was distracted, trying to protect one of the younger ones, a bug got close to him, and he barely got it by the throat in time. A hideous mouth within a mouth snapped at him. The hunter ignored it and used his blade to slash into the air and sever the end of the sharp tail the bug was about to impale him with. Clearly he’d fought these creatures before and knew their ways.
A younger hunter tried to strike at a trio of monsters and was distracted. A sharp tail stuck through his side, and he fell to the ground. The bugs tried to drag him into the mouth of the cavern, but the older one unleashed a flurry of plasma fire and slashing with his wrist blades, leaving pieces of smoking obsidian bug parts scattered about.
The third hunter dragged the injured one back toward the ship and used his shoulder cannon to pick off bugs from afar. The older hunter had cleared a wide swath and the bugs, still pouring out of the cave, but in fewer numbers, avoided him.
He resorted to using his shoulder weapon to pick them off. Somehow, I could sense his reluctance even though I had no idea what was under the mask.
The other hunters, now bolder, began moving farther into clusters of bugs and slashed them to the ground.
The bugs were fewer and fewer, and began scrambling off in different directions. I feared they’d come toward us. “We need to get the hell out of here,” I said over the radio.
Connor replied, “What are you saying? This is amazing! Tell me you’re getting all of this.” His riveted eyes were fixed on the hunters.
He moved out from behind the boulder with his holo-cam.
“Connor, stay back!” I shouted, gesturing for him to duck down.
“Just a second. I want to get a little closer.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw something approaching us. Brendan went white as he heard it on his sound gear.
I tried calling Connor several times, but he either couldn’t hear or was ignoring me.
Brendan and I cowered into the undergrowth, paralyzed with fear. I was praying it didn’t see him.
Something moved through the rocks in Connor’s direction. I saw the obsidian black carapace of one of the giant bugs as it slithered to where Connor was hiding. Before I could warn him, it leaped forward and wrapped its tail around Connor’s neck.
I let out a scream and stood up, watching the massive insect drag him across the ground and toward a small ravine. I started after him, but Brendan grabbed me by the ankle, stopping me.
As the creature was about to pull Connor into the crevice, it stopped suddenly when a metal spear stabbed through its skull and pinned it to the ground. The younger hunter emerged from behind the rocks and pulled his weapon from the bug’s skull.
Connor’s eyes went large as he glanced up at the giant. I opened my mouth to tell him to stop, but I was too late. A holo shooter to his core, Connor did the last thing he should have done in this situation—he aimed his camera up at the hunter.
A second later, the hunter’s shoulder camera pivoted and fired, and there was just a crater where Connor’s head had been. The camera must have looked like a weapon.
I let out a yell.
The hunter looked up at me. His shoulder cannon pointed at me. My heart stopped and the blood drained from me.
Then he just walked away like I didn’t exist.
I ducked back down. Brendan gazed at me with vacant eyes. Everything happened so quickly.
I looked toward Kevin, whose camera was still recording all of it.
Before I could stop him, he bounded down the ridge toward the hunter with his camera, blind with rage. Lara was frozen in terror. She looked over and saw me. Brendan and I gestured for her to come toward us. She crawled through the undergrowth, dodging rocks while keeping low to avoid any blasts in her direction.
She saw where Kevin was and shouted down to him, “We have to leave!”
He ignored her. That’s when I noticed his other hand was holding a pistol, similar to the one from Lara’s bag.
Ten meters away from the hunter, Kevin raised it to fire.
Kevin’s chest was a smoking pit before he even finished his sentence. The hunter had pivoted and fired without even bothering to turn around, blasting a hole in his chest with his shoulder cannon.
Hysterical, Lara rummaged through her bag, mumbling to herself, “He took it. He took the pistol. When did he… how…”
I pulled the others away and down the ridge before anyone else decided to do something stupid, guiding us back toward the path that would take us to the landing zone.
Lara was in shock, shaking her head. Brendan wasn’t much better off.
“I didn’t know,” Lara said. “I didn’t know.”
I shushed them. We had no idea what was still out there.
Once we were a half a kilometer away, I stopped and said, “We need a place to hide until the ship comes.”
We scanned the junkyard around us—wrecked spaceships, broken-down vehicles, metal and other auto parts.
Brendan spotted a green hauler. It looked like good camouflage. There were a dozen others just like it. We ran toward it. As we climbed in, Brendan pointed at something on a roof near the main complex. “Look.”
I turned with a jerk, scared that maybe it was one of those creatures.
“What?” I asked.
“There was a satellite dish on it when we left. It’s not there now.”
“You mean it was working?” I asked.
Lara was sitting in the back of the hauler and had her arms around her knees. It was dawning on her.
“The company was tracking everything. They were watching as those… creatures killed everyone. They let it happen. Hell, they may have wanted it to happen.” After that, we fell into silence for a while.
* * *
We stayed in silence, subdued, counting the minutes until the shuttle would be back.
“ETA?” I asked Lara.
“Sixteen minutes,” she whispered.
She looked at me with regret. I put my hand on her shoulder. She’d not told us the whole truth, but she’d never meant for this to happen.
“People have to know what happened here,” she said, tears filling her eyes.
“They will,” I replied.
Lara’s eyes narrowed on mine. “I don’t care if I survive.”
“You will survive. We all will.” I cut her short, afraid at the thought of losing another person.
She continued, “They have to know. Promise me.”
I didn’t know what to make of her. She was a spoiled, manipulative brat who had got half of us killed, but in that moment I also realized she really believed in her cause.
Before I could reply, we heard a THUMP on the roof… followed by footsteps, back and forth. We didn’t make a sound. There was another THUMP and then the sound of gravel as if something heavy landed.
Lara mouthed, “Thirteen minutes.”
We waited until it was silent again.
Brendan glanced up from his sound gear. “I can hear our ship coming.”
I climbed out of the hauler first, making sure we weren’t about to be ambushed. The area was clear. The rest followed, taking quick but careful steps.
We were just a few hundred meters away from the entrance to the landing pad when I saw a shadow on the ground and froze in my tracks. Brendan and Lara trained their lights around and looked back at me.
“You okay?” asked Brendan.
I glared straight ahead. My heart was pounding but I had to take action.
“Set the gear down,” I said coldly.
“What do you mean?” Lara snapped.
“Put the fucking gear on the ground.”
She sensed my seriousness and did as I said.
We laid our holo-cameras and recording gear at our feet.
A moment later, two hunters shimmered into view.
Lara gasped at the chilling sight.
The old hunter was closest to me. I glanced up at him. He remained motionless except for the shoulder cannon that was aimed at my head. I didn’t react. I didn’t have to.
“Now, put your hands in the air and walk away slowly,” I told Lara and Brendan.
As we started walking, I eyed the old hunter one last time. To a degree, I hoped he could comprehend the disdain I had for what they did to my friends. But what difference would it make? This was their sport. He followed my gaze as we passed them. No reaction. Only silence.
I kept walking, eyes straight ahead. I could hear the sound of crunching gravel as Brendan followed. When we made it past the entrance to the landing field, we heard a loud zap and bang followed by a small explosion. The hunters incinerated our equipment.
The rescue ship was hovering over the landing zone with the hatch open. Heitor had probably seen the alien vessel on his approach and wasn’t going to stay to find out who it belonged to. We ran to the craft, weaving through the loading equipment and fuel trucks.
Brendan was first on the ship. Heitor yelled something to us over the thrusters, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. Brendan’s face went slack, and I looked back at what he saw.
Lara had been a few meters behind us and she tripped. As she got up, her body shuddered and blood spurted from her chest. Hiding under a cargo truck was the glistening shape of the alien bug that rose out from its hiding place. The menacing figure towered over her as she screamed in senseless agony.
Brendan grabbed me by the collar and pulled me into the ship before I could run to her. The last I saw of Lara was her being dragged into the night. There were flashes of laser fire in the distance and shiny dark things moving in from all sides of the landing zone.
* * *
I brushed a tear away. The interrogators gazed at me, their faces emotionless.
Then, the younger man spoke. “That’s it?”
I scoffed, “Yeah, that’s it. Now, can I go?”
The older man leaned forward. “Ms. Philip, we still have questions about what happened. There are also the legal consequences of violating a planetary quarantine.”
“Let me tell it to the judge,” I replied.
He smirked. “I wouldn’t make plans for that right now.”
“I get it,” I said. “You don’t want anyone knowing what happened down there. Frankly, I don’t care. They weren’t my friends anyway. You have all our gear. You’ve scanned me, probed me. All I have is a story I want to put behind me.”
“That’s a very rational position,” said the older man.
What he meant to say was that I was a cold-hearted bitch. And I hoped he believed it, because that was my only chance of getting out of there.
Heaven help me if they found out that I lied about Lara dying before she made it to Jian Station with the holo-cards and the data about what really happened on Tenebris. In that case, Connor and Kevin really would have died in vain, and what happened on that derelict planet would happen again.
Despite the horrific scene I witnessed on Tenebris, after watching how the Company tried to exploit it for their own purposes and then cover it up, I’m not sure if the real terrors we’re going to encounter as we spread out across the galaxy are going to be the ones we find, or the ones we bring with us.